North Jersey pastry chef Heather Bertinetti wows at Four Seasons

Heather Bertinetti-Rozzi, of Westwood, is the Pastry Chef at The Fours Seasons in Manhattan. Here, she is making some pastries.

The chocolate velvet cake had to go.

So what if it had been the most famous dessert for more than half a century at Manhattan's ultimate power lunch landmark, The Four Seasons. To Heather Bertinetti, 29, it was a relic, one that she swept off her menu upon taking charge of The Four Seasons' desserts in September. The reaction from her staff: "They haven't let any other pastry chef do that before."

"And I was like, 'Well, they haven't met me.' "

Bertinetti has never been easy to faze. Not when she was growing up in River Edge with her Easy-Bake oven, chirping to grown-ups that this was what she wanted to do someday. Not when she was 19, just out of culinary school and swiftly won jobs at two of Manhattan's most acclaimed restaurants. Not when she helped build an award-winning empire of Italian restaurants while refusing to serve the usual cannoli or tiramisù.

And certainly not now that the Westwood resident is the first woman to be appointed to a top chef position at The Four Seasons, the celebrated destination for celebrities and business magnates.

By all accounts, Bertinetti has talent to spare. Just as crucial to her success has been a secret weapon – a work ethic and thick skin cultivated during her blue-collar upbringing in a prominent Bergen County union family.

It began with her late grandfather, Daniel Solleder, the former president of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 164. "He never showed that he was intimidated," Bertinetti said. "He could overcome everything … you have to work hard and put your mind to it and don't let them see your weakness."

Watching how Solleder navigated union battles later helped his granddaughter find her way in competitive kitchens, fend off nasty and misogynist co-workers and lead teams of pastry cooks.

"She's very tough … She won't cry. She'll make other people cry before she cries," said restaurateur Chris Cannon, for whom Bertinetti once ran the pastry departments of four prominent Manhattan restaurants.

'Willing to stick to it'

How did Bertinetti get into the food business to begin with? She credits an aunt with a knack for baking, a well-worn Mrs. Fields cookbook and, ultimately, a paying job at the former La Petite Patisserie in Dumont, where she remembers making gum paste flowers and cleaning the bathrooms.

The patisserie's owner, Tricia Vanech, remembers an unusually ambitious teenager eager to learn. "She was definitely patient for a kid, which is unusual for that age," Vanech said. "Even if it was difficult, she was still willing to stick to it. She would work through her frustration."

Bertinetti said Vanech encouraged her to apply to the Culinary Institute of America, where she enrolled after graduation from River Dell High School. But that too posed hurdles. "She always had trouble with math in high school, and a lot of baking is really chemistry and a lot of math," said her father, Stephen Bertinetti. "She had dyslexia on top of that. It made it even more challenging … [but] like everything else, she conquered that, and she figured out how to do everything."

The challenges seemed to make Bertinetti even more determined. "I'm a very competitive person," she said. "I have this insane idea that so long as I'm constantly working harder than everyone else, I'm going to be more successful."

Then came internship time. "I have no money. Everyone else has rich parents," allowing them to take internships in exotic locales. Bertinetti says a Culinary Institute dean offered her a nanny job at his sister's, figuring she could work at the various restaurants at the nearby Mohegan Sun casino.

"So here I am on a farm in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut, driving 45 minutes to an Indian reservation every day," she remembers. But she found it easy to stand out simply by working hard, and she "decided to, like, hustle them," she said. At one point while working at Todd English's Tuscany restaurant, the intern nosed her way into a tasting with the celebrity chef and boldly presented him with an apple crème brûlée charlotte she had cooked up. She says he immediately pulled out a $50 bill and bought the recipe.

He wouldn't be the only big-name chef to notice her. After graduation, Bertinetti was recruited by two big names: Tom Colicchio's Gramercy Tavern and then Thomas Keller's Per Se. Eventually she landed at Alto, which had been taken over by Cannon and chef Michael White.

When Bertinetti was named Alto's executive pastry chef, she was 23. She had never been to Italy. But she had a clear vision for her desserts: "I wanted them to be twists and takes on Italian desserts. I wanted them to be more creative, more out of the box." She later oversaw the dessert menus of subsequent sister restaurants Convivio, Marea and Osteria Morini; her signature gianduja chocolate bar became a highlight of Marea, which won the 2010 James Beard award for best new restaurant.

In a three-star review of Marea, New York Times critic Sam Sifton wrote: "Heather Bertinetti is Marea's pastry chef. She doesn't fool around. Hers is a rich torrone gelato with black cocoa cake; she makes a mean crisp-polenta number with blackberry compote." Sifton later cited her "hugely rich desserts" as a rare consistency of Osteria Morini, and later, when Bertinetti joined the Upper East Side restaurant Crown, current Times critic Pete Wells praised her "desserts, especially her milk chocolate soufflé," as a highlight of the otherwise uneven restaurant.

Contemporary techniques

Crown was also where Bertinetti met her husband, Ted Rozzi, who is now the executive chef of Acela Club at Citi Field. After the birth of their now 17-month-old son, Dean, they moved to Westwood, where Bertinetti praises the quality of life even as she endures a commute to Park Avenue that she says can take up to two hours.